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Daniel Foster

The Onion was wrong but it shouldn’t have apologized

Still, while I think the joke was both comedically and normatively irredeemable, and the anger at it justified, I don’t like the precedent set by Onion, Inc., when CEO Steve Hannah wrote the kind of platitudinous and panicky corporate apology letter that The Onion would normally satirize, and managed to come off as spineless and condescending at the same time…

I don’t like it, because apologizing for jokes, even — or especially — the ones that are the most “crude and offensive,” is un-Onion-like behavior. In fact, it’s positively anti-Onion behavior. It does violence to the very spirit that makes The Onion The Onion — the thing that renders it able to stand apart from and thus contextualize our culture — and it is going to make hardcore fans wonder from now on whether every punch is being pulled. Just as you don’t ask Batman to fill out police reports, if The Onion is yoked with the same PC strictures as the rest of us, then who will tell us, with poignancy and bile, when the PC strictures have gone too far?

Blowback

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The way I see it, the Onion tweet was making fun of people like us. It was mocking those who go online and sometimes viciously attack celebrities for what are sometimes very small things. It was mocking online commenting b*tchiness and nastiness. The point of referring to the young actress in the joke was to show the absurdity and shamefulness of the b*tchy Twitter culture.

They shouldn’t have apologized.

The Onion’s real mistake was thinking its audience would be able to get the satire.

The Onion’s real mistake was thinking its audience would be able to get the satire.

bluegill on February 26, 2013 at 7:11 PM

Why would a 9-year-old understand satire? She’s the one who has every right to be offended, after all. The folks who are outraged on her behalf don’t interest me, but the Onion should definitely apologize to her.

I’m just not buying these limited defenses we see on Hot Gas, AoSHQ, and now from Daniel Foster (who is an excellent writer, btw). My beef with Foster’s piece is mostly I don’t think the Onion plays as grand as role as he suggests and that the indefensible comment/joke necessitated an apology. Chalk it up to the continued downward slide that the Onion put itself in a position that it had to make an apology – but not that not making an apology would have been a fortifying move.

Foster does sum it up well in saying: “Worst of all, it was pointless. It didn’t tell us, and barely even attempted to gesture at, anything interesting or insightful about the media or celebrity.”

Bingo. Pointless. Not only disgusting. Pointless and disgusting. We can say that the intent was to make some biting social commentary…but it just didn’t. There was no context, no hook, nothing to make it relevant to anything. Thus it comes across as depraved.

Eh, they were right to apologize, but they way they apologized was wrong. They said no one should be the butt of that joke when they should have just said a child shouldn’t be the butt of that joke, i doubt anyone would care if an adult was on the receiving end of it.

Nope. The real mistake was thinking using a 9 year old CHILD was an appropriate subject for their “satire” attempt.
She’s a CHILD. What part of that is so hard to understand?
MikeknaJ on February 26, 2013 at 8:39 PM

Sorry, but the joke wouldn’t have worked as well had they not referred to the young actress. Yes, the effect was jolting, and it may have been using absurdity to highlight the indefensible, out-of-control nature of much of the bashing of female actresses by online critics. This was the furthest thing from a mean-spirited joke. It seems, instead, to be criticizing the mean-spiritedness. 75% of the comments on this site are incredibly mean-spirited, though.

Sorry, but the joke wouldn’t have worked as well had they not referred to the young actress. Yes, the effect was jolting, and it may have been using absurdity to highlight the indefensible, out-of-control nature of much of the bashing of female actresses by online critics. This was the furthest thing from a mean-spirited joke. It seems, instead, to be criticizing the mean-spiritedness. 75% of the comments on this site are incredibly mean-spirited, though.

The Onion has always been great and continues to be great.

bluegill on February 26, 2013 at 9:14 PM

You can make that point without the C-word.

Do you wan to explain to your daughter why someone called her a C***? “It’s okay honey! A “c***” means this. But don’t let it bother you. After all, The Onion is a brilliant satirical publication and their point was quite exquisite!”

I’m tired of this idea that “satire” excuses everything. It’s what Bill Maher hides behind when he doesn’t want to take responsibility for the things he says. It’s just comedy, people! Republicans have no sense of humor! My jokes about Trig Palin are so insightful!

A truly brilliant satirist can make their point without stooping to this kind of dreck.

Ace has a post today about liberals not laughing at Malkin’s mockery of Michelle Obama. They can lodge the same complaint, that we are just being mean-spirited about Michelle’s light-hearted antics. You think Letterman’s joke didn’t work. But you assert he was really just saying what he believed, so not a joke at all. So your distinctions all seem very subjective. Letterman’s jokes were over the line because of what you think of his diseased mind…but the Onion joke because the joker is just a funny guy. It’s a very weak argument you’re making.